"I thought that if I was gone there'd be no more troubles, and people could get on with the rest of their lives."
Tony decided to commit suicide when he found that his usual way of dealing with trouble - immersing himself in his job - did not work any more. The break-up of his marriage had left him in a state of what he describes as physical and emotional pain and emptiness. In the past he could forget his problems by concentrating on work, but this was different.
"It got so bad that I just couldn't block it any more," he says.
He loved his wife and seven-year-old daughter and longed to get the marriage together again. But as time went on without a reconciliation - though he had access to his daughter - suicide began to look increasingly like the best option.
Like many suicidal people, he failed to see the devastation the act would have on his child, his wife and his wider family. The way he saw it, "there'd be no more hassle for me and there'd be no hassle for them".
Fortunately for Tony, a colleague "noticed that I was pretty low and that I wasn't the happy sort of fellow that I was before".
His colleague was the only one who seemed to notice. "I thought I had friends," he says, "but they did not get involved. I just kept going down a lot more."
When he left work in the evenings he would go home and sit up until four or five o'clock in the morning, unable to sleep. He was so caught up in his feelings that when he had access to his daughter he was not giving her the attention she needed. Finally, "I felt that I didn't need to be around any more."
That feeling intensified, and a point came at which he had definite plans to kill himself within a week. As it turned out his colleague, who did not know how close he was to suicide, met a counsellor and asked him if he would see Tony.
"I thought, I'll give this guy a chance, I'll see what he has to offer," says Tony.
First, he needed - and got - an assurance that what he told the counsellor would remain confidential. Just talking to the counsellor took a weight off his shoulders, he says. At the first meeting, the counsellor got a commitment from him that he would stay alive for a few weeks.
"Things started to change. I could see that I would be missed. I thought that by going that would be the end of it and there would be no more problems, but the counsellor made me realise there would be problems. People would be hurt not having me around, or they would be sad.
"I realised it's not just me. I'll be gone, and they'll be left to face it for years."
Along with the counsellor, he was able to identify priorities - what was important to him, what was not important but needed doing anyhow - and they set achievable goals for renewing contact with people and sorting out some of the innumerable, often debilitating, tasks involved in the aftermath of a marriage break-up.
Today he is back in touch with his family of origin and back at work, where he has renewed friendships with colleagues from whom he had withdrawn. He enjoys his visits to his daughter. "I'm counting the days now until I see her and planning what we'll do."
His strong advice to other suicidal people is "to see somebody who can help them. The big mistake is thinking there's nobody out there can help you." What if his colleague had not put him in touch with the counsellor?
"I would have gone ahead with it. I would have done it that week."